every single social interaction i've ever had has been complete guesswork

every time i have a conversation i spend the next 30 minutes after grading myself

i am a serene and lovely person. yes absolutely everything bothers me & i go through life in a state of constant aggravation and annoyance & have to physically restrain myself from breaking down in tears over how utterly irritated i am sometimes. but i am serene and lovely nonetheless

I'm really not a very angry person there's just a lot of rage inside me

There's something terrible boiling bubbling under my skin ready to burst out of my chest but I'm a chill guy

is creeping out of some open window same way it was
in the summer of ’95 when my heartbreak was a different
animal howling at the same clouds & the cops broke
up the block party at franklin park right before the song
hit the last verse because someone from the right hood
locked eyes with someone from the wrong one & me &
my boys ran into the corner store & tucked the chocolate
bars into the humid caverns of our pants pockets
& later licked the melted chocolate from its sterling
wrappers in the woods behind mario’s crib with the
girls we liked too much to want to know if they liked
us back & there it was, the summer i learned to kiss
the air & imagine it bending into a mouth & here it is
again, the summer everything outside i love is melting
& i tell my boys there is a reason songs from the 90s are
having a revival & it’s because the heart & tongue are
the muscles with the most irresistible histories & i’m
kind of buzzed. i’m kind of buzzing. i’m kind of a hive
with no begging & hollow cavities. there is intimacy
in the moment where the eyes of two enemies meet.
there is a tenderness in knowing what desire ties you to
a person, even if you have spent your dreaming hours
cutting them a casket from the tree in their mother’s
front yard. it is a blessing to know someone wants a
funeral for you. a coming together of your people from
their faraway corners to tell some story about your
thefts & triumphs. all of your better selves shaking
their heads over a table, chocolate staining their teeth.
i suppose there is also intimacy in the moment where
a lover becomes an enemy, though it is tough to say
when it happens. probably when there is a song you
can’t remember them living inside of anymore, even if
both of you curled your lips around the words in a car
at some impossible hour of morning, driving away from
the place you met. i like my agony threaded together by
the same chorus. not everything is sisyphean. no one
ever wants to imagine themselves as the boulder.

HANIF WILLIS-ABDURRAQUIB

"Weird energy in here today" I say, referring to the inside of my brain.

“Poetry leads to the same place as all forms of eroticism – to the blending and fusion of separate objects. It leads us to eternity, it leads us to death, and through death to continuity. Poetry is eternity; the sun matched with the sea.”

— Georges Bataille. "Eroticism: Death and Sensuality".

*forms an emotional bond with the cool stick I found on a hike*